An Idea, Sentiment, Desire

Early in my career, my greatest struggle was in creating. I found that my passion for the human form and my God-given talents made it easy to illustrate, to show things “as they are”, but to me, this was disappointingly insufficient; art is so much more. It should evoke and stir others to passion. It should showcase imperfections and limitations. But most of all, it should be creative, meaning that it generates something new: an idea, a sentiment, a desire. I have found great satisfaction in experimenting across multiple techniques, perhaps because of the newness and my desire to explore, but more likely because of the imperfections they allow. Pencil and chalk are so precise that they leave little space for the beautiful accidents which manifest themselves in other media. As I force my technical skills into new and imperfect formats, I find it jarring, disrupting, exciting—and this excitement comes precisely because I don’t know what to expect. To me, this is creation.

An Idea, Sentiment, Desire

Early in my career, my greatest struggle was in creating. I found that my passion for the human form and my God-given talents made it easy to illustrate, to show things “as they are”, but to me, this was disappointingly insufficient; art is so much more. It should evoke and stir others to passion. It should showcase imperfections and limitations. But most of all, it should be creative, meaning that it generates something new: an idea, a sentiment, a desire. I have found great satisfaction in experimenting across multiple techniques, perhaps because of the newness and my desire to explore, but more likely because of the imperfections they allow. Pencil and chalk are so precise that they leave little space for the beautiful accidents which manifest themselves in other media. As I force my technical skills into new and imperfect formats, I find it jarring, disrupting, exciting—and this excitement comes precisely because I don’t know what to expect. To me, this is creation.